Ne-Yo’ Says Duet with Juicy J Makes Sense for Both of Us

Image courtesy Frank Micelotta/FOXNe-Yo has a hit with his latest single, “She Knows, from his Non-Fiction album. However, the singer tells ABC Radio that he can’t take full credit for the song’s success, since the club banger was certainly enhanced by his collaborator, Juicy J.

“Whenever you do a collaboration with another artist — let’s say I’m R&B and he’s hip-hop — you always want to try to find that gray area,” Ne-Yo says of the stripper anthem. “[Juicy] doesn’t sound like he’s trying to do what I do and I don’t really sound like I’m trying to do what he does, like, the song makes sense for both of us. And that was something that I tried to, that I paid attention to with every feature on this album.”

Ne-Yo has much respect for Juicy J, a veteran rapper who’s lasted decades in the business.

“I call him the comeback king. A lot of people don’t understand, Juicy J was rapping in the ’80s, ladies and gentleman, OK. There’s a whole generation of kids who know Juicy J, who were not alive when Juicy J started rapping,” Ne-Yo says. “So for him to still be as relevant as he is now, that is definitely something to be proud of and something that is ridiculously impressive, on top of the fact that he’s just a good guy, you know what I mean?”

Working with good people, like the guest artists featured on Non-Fiction, is important to Ne-Yo. “There’s a lot of people that you meet in the industry that are not very genuine. You know, on camera they’re one guy, off camera they’re a whole other person,” says Ne-Yo. “With Juicy, with [Pitbull], with T.I., it is what it is, you get what you get and I respect that about them, real people.”